TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, Dec. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Last night, President Juan Orlando Hernández was declared the official winner of the November 26 Honduran presidential election by the country's Supreme Electoral Tribunal, or TSE. President Hernández will serve a second four-year term following his inauguration on January 27, 2018.

According to the TSE's final results, President Hernández, the National Party's candidate, received 42.95 percent of presidential ballots. Salvador Nasralla of the Libre Alliance received 41.24 percent, and Luis Zelaya of the Liberal Party received 14.74 percent.

At a press conference announcing the results, TSE head David Matamoros Baston said, "The electoral process has been long and tedious, but we have fulfilled our mandate."

Matamoros said that this election was the most transparent in Honduran history. More than 16,000 domestic and international electoral observers monitored the November 26 vote, the most ever for a Honduran election.

Today, following the TSE's announcement of President Hernández's re-election, the European Union's Electoral Observation Mission to Honduras, or EU EOM, publicly supported the Tribunal's results.

In a statement published on its website early December 18, EU EOM said that after the Libre Alliance challenged the TSE's initial results, EU EOM compared 14,363 copies of election results forms submitted to them by the Libre Alliance with the Tribunal's official results from the same polling stations. Following the review, EU EOM concluded, "There was virtually no difference between the two sets of results forms."

EU EOM also said that the TSE's latest recount of 4,753 presidential ballot boxes on December 9-10 "was undertaken in conditions of full transparency and in the presence of national and international observers." EU EOM added that on Election Day, representatives from the National Party, the Libre Alliance, and the Liberal Party "were present in virtually 100% of the observed polling stations, both during opening and voting periods, and during closing and counting procedures."

"The European Union cannot and should not intervene in the independence and autonomy of the Honduras people," added EU Chief Observer for the general elections in Honduras Marisa Matias.